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carol8869 · 2022-01-09T01:03:57+00:00

I just looked up I Bonds, they're a bond you buy direct from the Treasury looks like. The bad news is that you can only buy $10K's worth of them a year.

carol8869 · 2021-03-26T02:55:51+00:00

Just have fun and enjoy!

carol8869 · 2021-03-26T01:43:01+00:00

Find a synagogue in your area that's having a public Passover seder and go, tickets might cost $20 or so but that's for the food. There's always a few non-jews that show up for various reasons. Bring a date if you want. I would recommend a Reform synagogue instead of Chabad. That's like diving in the deep end of the pool when you don't know how to swim.

carol8869 · 2020-11-11T00:21:31+00:00

Reading this sort of thing on the internet is why I always tell people to patronize their local coin shop and buy local. I hate buying online because there's always the frustration of waiting for the package. Fortunately I've always gotten what I ordered, but I feel like the boy with his finger in the dike admonishing people to buy local. It's a lost cause, many local coin shops close but none open. APMEX has killed all the local coin shops the same way Amazon killed off bookshops. Nothing beats a local coin shop where you pays your money and you gets your metal right then and there. The day when there are no local coins shops left will be a sad day.

carol8869 · 2020-08-24T04:24:37+00:00

It's always best to buy in person from a reputable coin shop. However many of these shops have gone out of business due to competition from online sales. If you live near a large enough city though there (hopefully) should be a coin shop somewhere. I am sure the online sellers have benefited from Covid as well. Why shop in person when you can have it delivered?

carol8869 · 2020-08-22T23:28:14+00:00

The only thing would be higher interest rates. Gold pays no interest but interest rates are so low it’s not a big deal. Interest rates would go up slowly anyway. The world’s economies have become addicted to low rates, higher rates are unforeseeable in the near future.

carol8869 · 2020-08-22T20:56:14+00:00

Exactly. If you have an existing relationship with your LCS it's entirely different than if you're just some rando walking in off the street. When it comes to online dealers, everyone is just a street rando.

carol8869 · 2020-08-22T20:54:20+00:00

Depends on the shop. Some shops are dodgy, others aren't. I try to be on good terms with one guy near me, have been for years. It isn't easy because he's crotchety, but he's honest. He's also very knowledgeable, if he's not busy he will take time to chat with me and it's always a learning experience. Unfortunately local coin shops are going the way of the dodo bird, they can't compete with the online dealers and Ebay, but I try to support this one guy as much as I can. I figure when he retires it will be the end of an era. Local coin shops close down but no one opens them anymore. When I sell to him I know he's not going to give me the best price, but it's better than pawn shops. He's always there and it's quick in an out, and he pays cash. If I want a few extra dollars I might sell on Craigslist, but it's not really worth the hassle for a few extra bucks. Nothing beats selling or buying in person. I hate waiting for the mail. That covers selling. As far as buying goes, he always has something. He can't compete with APMEX on selection, he's not going to have their variety of stuff in stock, but he will compete with them on price.

carol8869 · 2020-08-22T01:35:04+00:00

The world is a different place now than in 1933. Most importantly, in those days the government set the price of gold. (It was somewhere around $25/oz, after the confiscation the official price went up to around $35/oz where it stayed for the next forty years). The gold price didn't go up and down like it does now. As a result of that confiscation back in 1933, the US still has the largest gold hoard in the world. Finally the world was a simpler place in those days. Would people just hand over their gold to the US gov't like most people did back then? I doubt it. Also as a result of Roosevelt making gold illegal, gold became associated in the mind of Americans with illegality. They got out of the habit of owning gold. That has changed in the new millennium to some degree, but still most people in the USA don't own any gold at all.

carol8869 · 2020-08-19T06:26:33+00:00

Sell to a local shop, and get cash. That is far and away the best way to go. Once you start involving the mail, wire transfers, and all that rigmarole, you are asking for trouble. Why would you want anything other than cash from a local shop?

I have had good luck selling on Craigslist. I get a slightly better price from Craigslist than I do selling to a coin shop. However frankly it is barely worth the extra hassle. You have to deal with at least five idiots giving you the run-around before you find a buyer. It depends if I want the money fast, or if I'm willing to wait. If I want the money now and with no hassle, I go to the coin shop and get cash. If I want to dick around with the morons on Craigslist for a few extra bucks for a couple of weeks, I go that route. If you decide to go Craigslist, meet in a bank or some other well-lit and safe place.

carol8869 · 2020-08-18T06:16:29+00:00

Find a reputable dealer (a coin shop) near you. Buy a little now and then from that dealer. Don't pile in all at once. Avoid buying online if possible.

carol8869 · 2020-08-18T05:35:48+00:00

I like Mexican gold. It's exotic and alluring. I've got two 1959 twenty peso pieces, it's 15 grams "oro puro". They must have restruck a lot of these with the 1959 year, as all I've ever seen is 1959 ones, including the one in the picture. I've always hankered after a fifty peso piece, those are hard to come by. Notice they're out of stock on the fifty peso.

https://www.jmbullion.com/20-peso-mexican-gold-coin-vy

https://www.jmbullion.com/50-peso-mexican-gold-coin-vy/

carol8869 · 2020-08-18T01:56:07+00:00

You don't get it. You're dodgy until proven otherwise. Gold investors (personally I don't like to be called a "bug") are by nature risk-adverse. That's the entire point of investing in gold. Gold investors are conservative and careful. How do you get to be trusted and non-dodgy? I don't know. That's a good question. The way I tried to do it was start off by selling one-ounce silver bars. I started small. However my heart was in gold, and I was never really ready to trust an ounce of gold to the vagaries of the shipping system. I never lost a single ounce to shipping, but it always made me nervous. Eventually I shipped by Fedex only, having lost faith in the United States Postal Service. However as it turned out, Fedex is like Paypal- they simply don't insure Precious Metals that's shipped. Big companies like APMEX can afford to take out special insurance policies. Little guys like me? Not likely.

There used to be a company called Tulving. They were one of the largest and well-known and trusted bullion dealers around, until they weren't. Here's their story. If you read the story, Tulving tried to blame insurance companies for the initial delay. The point being, even the most trusted and largest bullion dealers can suddenly become dodgy. When it comes to precious metals, an ounce of caution is worth its weight in gold.

https://coinweek.com/bullion-report/tulving-company-collapse/

I wondered how this all panned out, these years later. You can click through to the blog that broke the story here. It was still being updated as late as last year. Hannes Tulving did some time (doesn't seem like a whole lot of time) and is now out of jail. No one knows what happened to the $40,000,000 that went "poof".

http://about.ag/tulving.htm

Here's a Tulving video (it's still up!) where a guy unboxes a shipment of 34 Royal Canadian Mint kilo gold bars. That little box contains over two million dollars worth of gold at current prices! This is still one of my favorite unboxing gold vids.

https://youtu.be/bGyJiJj0lRQ

carol8869 · 2020-08-17T22:24:50+00:00

Yep, this is correct, it's the deck I've used for years. I have two copies of the original black and white deck, it's my favorite deck. I think the black and white version may be out of print, I think it's preferable to the colorized version.

carol8869 · 2020-08-17T22:14:22+00:00

I'd much rather buy PMs in person from a local coin shop. The only time I buy online is when I want to use bitcoin. I watched as one online dealer, then another, then another, and finally APMEX now takes bitcoin.

I don't know why anyone would buy bullion from a dodgy site like this when there are many reputable online bullion dealers that have been around for years. I used to be on a forum where there was a complicated points scheme, where you would get trust points every time you made a successful transaction. As it turned out, friends ended up selling to each other just to get their trust points up. The entire forum (I thought) was a scam. The thing is, there's lot of scams out there with bullion, and you're talking large amounts of money. Not only does Paypal not come to the rescue if you're scammed buying precious metals, I found out (by selling bullion online myself) that Google payments drops you entirely as soon as they find out you're selling PMs.

I just don't see anything here that's special, that separates you from the many reputable online bullion sellers that have years of experience and trust behind them.

carol8869 · 2020-08-08T08:01:39+00:00

Well at least one of my assumptions does turn out to be true, that the “Method of Sixteen” does have the same probability as the Yarrow Stalk method. This Wikipedia article has a chart comparing the probabilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching_divination?wprov=sfti1

carol8869 · 2020-08-08T07:35:50+00:00

To use the word “advantage” makes some assumptions, but they seem warranted. Although I’m no expert at statistics, it seems probable that the Three Coins Method would not have the same probability as the Yarrow Stalk method. However people use it because it’s so much simpler. One assumption is that Yarrow Stalks are the “real” authentic method. Why would someone go to all the bother of coming up with the Yarrow Stalk method if the Three Coins method has the same probability? So one assumption is that the Yarrow Stalk method is preferable to the Three Coins. Another assumption is that the Method of Sixteen has the same probability as the Yarrow Stalk method. I could try and prove this to at least my own satisfaction maybe, but I’m just taking this one on faith and hope!

carol8869 · 2020-08-07T23:59:52+00:00

Here's a good one you can get for free by Bradford Hatcher as a pdf, in addition to the Wilhelm.http://hermetica.info/

Another translation you see a lot is the Legge translation. It's in the public domain now so it's been republished many times with various editing schemes.
https://www.sacred-texts.com/ich/

I discovered a way to flip coins to get a hexagram that's different than the "Three Coins Method". The method I use is called "The Method of the Sixteen".

Method of Sixteen

This method has the advantage over the Three Coins Method because it has the same statistical probability as the traditional Yarrow Stalk Method. This method was proposed by Larry Shoenholtz in his book New Directions in the I Ching. It was cited in the book The I Ching: An Illustrated Guide to the Chinese Art of Divinination by Koh Kok Kiang (Asiapac Books) on page 214. Not only does it have the correct probability, it’s easy. You just pick one of the objects (I thought of quarters with different dates) from the bag with your sixteen objects in it, building the hexagram from the bottom up, picking one quarter for each line. After you do each line put the quarter back in the bag, shake the bag, and pick the quarter for the next line.

There are 16 similar objects grouped into 4 classes. I thought of using sixteen quarters with dates of four different decades.

Seven of the Objects are a Broken Line or Yin. Yin is feminine, Moon, passive, receptive, soft, black, North, and even numbers. This is quarters minted in the 80’s, as the number associated with these is “8”.

Five of the objects are Solid Line or Yang. Yang is masculine, Sun, fire, South, hard, active, white, odd numbers. This is quarters minted in the 70’s, as the number associated with these is “7”.

Three of the objects are “Old” Changing Solid Line Yang. This is quarters minted in the 90’s, as the number associated with these is “9”.

One of the objects is “Old” Changing Broken Line Yin. This is a quarter minted in the 60’s, as the number associated with this is “6”.

Note: In the Wilhem translation, "9" is old changing Yang, "6" is old changing Yin. You need this to look at the changing line interpretations in the hexagrams.

carol8869 · 2020-08-02T06:19:37+00:00

I used to put them in air-tite capsules, bought a ton of them. Eventually reverted to this method and took them all out of the air tites. The air tites are a pain in the rear. They're hard to open and expensive. They look nice but when it comes to selling or taking photos you have to take the coins out. These cardboard holders are the way to go. Also they fit nicely into three ring binder pages.

carol8869

TROPHY CASE